Otel.com / failure to send through refund

On 12 November, I booked a room through Trivago for 4 nights at the Grandhotel Hessischer Hof. Shortly thereafter, I received a bizarre-looking confirmation email from a company named Otel.com stating that I "might not be able to get a confirmation from the hotel if you try to get in contact with them."

This seemed very suspicious to me, so I called the hotel to see if there were even any rooms available for the selected dates. None - they were fully booked. I then attempted to call Otel.com on +[protected] to cancel - the number did not work and several times gave an automated message saying "This number is not in service." More red flags!

Finally, I able to get through using their live chat and was connected to 'Tolga', who rudely assured me that rooms were available, despite the hotel confirming that there were not. This was not good enough for me, so I requested a free cancellation and full refund. This was confirmed by another representative, Okan Akkus in an email on 12 November, stating "By visiting the 'my Account' page at otel.com you can confirm the cancelled status of the booking. [...] Please allow time for the refund to reflect on your statement."

On 16 November, I checked the My Account tab - the booking still showed active and not cancelled. Erge Koyuncu responded via a ticket that "there might have been an update problem in [my] account" and to please wait 7-14 business days for the refund to appear in my credit card statement.

17 business days later on 7 November, I contacted Otel.com via their ticketing system to inform them that the refund had not come through. No response. I then tried the chat line and was informed by 'Ahmed' that Erge Koyuncu was handling this and was not currently in the office. I asked him to ensure that she would respond when she came online tomorrow; he assured me that she would.

No response overnight and no word, so I contacted them again the following day on 8 November. Again, no response.

I called several more times and (this time!) managed to get through - I was told that they were following this up 'internally' (no proof of that, of course) and that they appreciated my patience.

Finally, on 13 November, I received an email from Yuliya Inan claiming that there had been issues "between the banks sides" and this had caused the refund not to go through. She claimed the refund had been applied again that day and I should wait a further 10 to 15 business days for this to be reflected on my statement.

Following this email, I contacted Otel.com on 14 November and advised that this was not good enough. I requested a copy of the remittance advice for both "refunds" as well as the contact details for a manager to escalate the issue. Both requests were rudely refused.

I will now be opening up a fraud investigation with our credit card company, as well as posting this review to as many sites as possible.